Here it becomes palpably evident which is the surest path from natural science
to mysticism. It is not the extravagant theorizing of the philosophy of nature,
but the shallowest empiricism that spurns all theory and distrusts all thought
.... Indeed, dialectics cannot be despised with impunity. However great one's
contempt for all theoretical thought, nevertheless one cannot bring two natural
facts into relation with each other, or understand the connection existing between
them, without theoretical thought. The only question is whether one's thinking
is correct or not, and contempt of theory is evidently the surest way to think
naturalistically, and therefore incorrectly. But, according to an old and well-known
dialectical law, incorrect thinking, carried to its logical conclusion, inevitably
arrives at the opposite of its point of departure. Hence, the empirical contempt
for dialectics is punished by some of the most sober empiricists being led into
the most barren of all superstitions, into modern spiritualism.